Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science

by Opitz, Donald L.; Bergwik, Staffan; Van Tiggelen, Brigitte

• ISBN13: 9781137492722
• ISBN10: 1137492724
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-20
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The fourteen chapters of this volume directly challenge the strong historiographical opposition between science and domesticity by analysing the role of domesticity in the making of the modern sciences, especially astronomy, chemistry, horticulture, engineering, meteorology, natural history, oceanography, physics, and radio technology. The authors offer a pioneering reorientation of the traditional emphasis on scientific developments associated with institutional and professional realms, by placing at the centre of their analyses such notions of domesticity as the domestic sphere, the household, the home, the family, and kinship  - both biological and 'fictive.' This reorientation, the editors argue, exposes the centrality of domesticity as a material, social, and symbolic substrate that critically shaped the historical development of the modern sciences globally.

Author Biography

Donald L. Opitz is Associate Professor of the School for New Learning and Affiliated Scholar of History at DePaul University, USA.

Staffan Bergwik is Associate Professor of History of Science and Ideas and Senior Lecturer of Literature and History of Ideas at Stockholm University, Sweden.

Brigitte Van Tiggelen is Director of European Operations of the Chemical Heritage Foundation and a member of the Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Domesticity and the Historiography of Science; Donald L. Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, and Brigitte Van Tiggelen
1. Botanizing at Badminton House: The Botanical Pursuits of Mary Somerset, first Duchess of Beaufort; Julie Davies
2. Gender and Space in Enlightenment Science: Madame Dupiéry's Scientific Work and Network; Isabelle Lémonon, translated by Laurent Damesin
3. Darwin's Home of Science and the Nature of Domesticity; Paul White
4. The Tensions of Homemade Science in the Work of Henderina Scott and Hertha Ayrton; Claire G. Jones
5. 'My daughters of Ceres': Domestications of Agricultural Science Education for Women; Donald L. Opitz
6. Gender and the Domestication of Wireless Technology in 1920s Pulp Fiction; Katy Price
7. Contemporary Homemade Meteorological Science: Co-constructing the Home and Weather-Climate Knowledge in the UK; Carol Morris and Georgina Endfield
8. Merchants, Scientists, and Artists: Scientific Families and Scientific Practice in Nineteenth Century Greece; Konstantinos Tampakis and George Vlahakis
9. Father, Son, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Otto Pettersson, Hans Pettersson, and the Early Twentieth-Century Inheritance of Oceanography; Staffan Bergwik
10. The Laboratory Society: Science and the Family in Sweden, c. 1900-1950; Sven Widmalm
11. Research Cooperation, Learning Processes, and Trust among Plant Scientists: Fictive Kinship, Academic Mobility, and Scientists' Careers; Helena Pettersson
12. 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam': The Family in the Knowledge Economy; Aalok Khandekar
13. Afterword: Science and the Domestic Sphere in the Longue Durée; Alix Cooper